


talk about space (well it's a beautiful place)

by squidmemesinc



Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: Fluff, M/M, copious hand holding
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-05
Updated: 2015-10-05
Packaged: 2018-04-24 22:28:27
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,945
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4937551
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/squidmemesinc/pseuds/squidmemesinc
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Even at 11 at night, it’s hot during the summer. The air rushing past the windows blows in warm across their bare arms and faces, but at least with the breeze the heat of their skin is dry instead of sticky and unpleasant. They’ve left the main freeway and are now traveling along one with no real destination or landmarks, for better or for worse.</p>
            </blockquote>





	talk about space (well it's a beautiful place)

**Author's Note:**

> one time my dad tried to teach me how to drive a stick shift
> 
> it didn't go well
> 
> (p.s. [in case you don't know who the third guy is](http://ladder-chan.tumblr.com/post/125829628173/extra-story-from-vol-17-the-fight-isnt-over-raw)

Even at 11 at night, it’s hot during the summer. The air rushing past the windows blows in warm across their bare arms and faces, but at least with the breeze the heat of their skin is dry instead of sticky and unpleasant. They’ve left the main freeway and are now traveling along one with no real destination or landmarks, for better or for worse. But it’s not about the where.

“Yudacchi, turn on the radio,” Oikawa requests, and then immediately starts spitting and pawing at his tongue. “Bug! Bleck! Bluh!”

Iwaizumi laughs. “That’s what you get for sticking your face out the window, idiot.”

Oikawa ducks his head back inside, having learned his lesson. “Good source of protein, though,” Yuda giggles as he turns on the radio. It sounds almost exactly like Top 40 pop, only with more static, and a few interspersed lines from a late night talk show for the niche Christian population of Miyagi. It makes for ambient white noise that mixes in with the rest of the atmosphere—soft and quiet, with only the occasional car passing in the opposite direction. The truck’s old yellow headlights don’t do much more to illuminate the road than the glow of the full moon, dulled out by the fluorescent natural blue for ten meters in front of them.

Oikawa leans his head on Yuda’s shoulder instead of where it was formerly resting on his arm slung across the open window. Iwaizumi’s wrist is warm where it’s pressing against Yuda’s thigh as he loosely rests his hand on the gearshift between them. Yuda’s right foot is nearly directly behind Iwaizumi’s where it’s propped up against the footrest, and Iwaizumi again wonders why they were fighting over who got to sit in the middle, since it clearly seems like the least comfortable position in the car, but they just laughed and refused to answer him.

A sudden dark shape comes into the view of the headlights in the middle of the road and Iwaizumi can’t stop in time to avoid it. Oikawa yells as the thing thuds under the tire, lifting them a couple centimeters in the air on one side, and they swerve when Iwaizumi stomps on the brakes. The engine is lugging and making unpleasant noises and Iwaizumi realizes he’s thrown his arm in front of Yuda and quickly corrects to shift down a couple of gears as he pulls over. “Are you guys okay? Sorry,” Iwaizumi says, out of breath and heart pounding in his ears.

Yuda nods and squeezes Iwaizumi’s arm, and Oikawa seems to have lodged himself deeply in the corner between the door and the seat. He gropes for Yuda’s free hand. Iwaizumi looks back through the open window, but he can’t see anything behind the car where there’s no light. “I want to see if I hit something—like a rabbit or—something,” Iwaizumi explains to them. They both nod. “Oikawa, hand me the flashlight in the glovebox.”

Oikawa shakily reaches into the glovebox, but he clutches the flashlight with wide eyes. “I want to come.”

“Someone get out then,” Yuda suggests.

Iwaizumi turns off the car and opens his door, and Oikawa gets out on the other side. Yuda hops out on Oikawa’s side and the three of them follow the flashlight beam up the road.

“Iwa-chan, what the heck was that?” Oikawa suddenly bursts out. “Didn’t you see that thing?”

“Yeah, I saw it, but—”

“Why didn’t you try to avoid it?” The flashlight beam zooms around the empty road as he gestures with it.

Yuda takes his hand. “You’re not supposed to swerve if it’s an animal, Tooru.”

“Dumbass Oikawa,” Iwaizumi mutters. He’s trying not to imagine what would have happened if they had swerved harder than that. He really wants to know what he hit.

Oikawa pouts. “How was I supposed to know that? I don’t drive.” He’s quiet for a minute. “I don’t think it was a bunny. Did you feel how we went up in the air? I was right under it!”

“Maybe a fox?” Iwaizumi says, distracted. The area they’re in doesn’t seem like a place a fox would live. There aren’t too many trees.

“That’s even worse!” Yuda says, frowning. They walk a little further, all hoping for a spare piece of blown tire, though none of them expects it to have been anything that flat. “Wait, Tooru, what’s that?” Oikawa shines the flashlight in the direction Yuda is pointing. It reveals a large rock, about as wide around as a volleyball, though a lot flatter and apparently with a chunk missing.

“Do you think we hit that?” Oikawa wonders, walking over to it.

“Probably,” Iwaizumi says, feeling relieved. “I’m glad it wasn’t alive.”

“We should check your tires though,” Yuda suggests. He tugs Oikawa’s hand in the opposite direction.

—

The tires are okay. Oikawa thinks the one that hit it looks a little low, but Iwaizumi assures him it’s fine. “Do you guys want to go back?” he asks, still feeling guilty.

Yuda, who has taken the flashlight, is shining it off the side of the road. There’s a field, with the dry, short grass glowing white in the natural illumination of the night sky. He whips around, shining the flashlight on the side of the truck. “Hajime, teach me how to drive!”

“What?” Iwaizumi squawks. “Kaneo, have you ever even been in the driver’s seat of a car?”

“Like, once,” Yuda says, beaming.

“Yeah, but it was probably an automatic.”

“Yeah, it was. Teach me anyway! You’re really good at it!”

“Not good enough to avoid a giant obvious rock,” Oikawa jeers. Iwaizumi moves to smack him on the head and he ducks and runs behind Yuda.

“Fine, but only to prove Oikawa wrong.”

“So petty, Iwa-chan.” He yelps when Iwaizumi lunges for him again.

—

“Okay, do you think you’ve got it?” Iwaizumi tacks on at the end of his lengthy explanation of the clutch, the gas, the gearshift, and for good measure, the brakes.

Yuda grips the steering wheel and stares straight ahead, face set in determination. “Yep!”

“So start with your foot pressing down on the clutch.” Yuda punches his foot in. “You don’t have to stomp on it, just be gentle.”

“Sorry, Hajime.” He smiles.

“It’s fine. Put it in gear.”

Yuda hesitates with his hand on the gearshift. He pulls his fingers back and peers at the little diagram on the knob, then shifts it over and forward.

“Now press down on the gas while you let the clutch up.”

The car is silent for the first two seconds, then growls and lurches slightly forward before sputtering off.

“It stalled,” Iwaizumi explains.

“Yes, I think so too.”

“Keep trying, Yudacchi!” Oikawa offers encouragingly, hanging off Iwaizumi’s shoulder and holding a clenched fist up in the small space of the truck cabin. Iwaizumi swats at his hand, which he counters by grabbing it.

“Start it and try it again,” Iwaizumi says, not bothering to withdraw his hand.

They stall three more times before Yuda gets the car to go forward at a slow crawl, around 25 klicks and suddenly everyone is screaming as if this is the most exciting thing to happen since sliced bread and they couldn’t be outrun by a toddler on a leash. Then they stall again when Yuda shifts into second gear. After another couple tries, one of which involves going straight from second to fourth, and more screaming, they’re cruising in second at a “comfortable” speed of 35.

“Do donuts!” Oikawa yells, banging his hands on the door and Iwaizumi’s thigh, only managing to get about 75% of the sound he wants.

“Can I?” Yuda asks breathlessly, daring to look away from the obstacle course of the wide open field to Iwaizumi.

“See if you can shift down first without stalling it. Push the clutch in—okay go—ease up on the gas just a little—”

“Yaaaaaaaay!” Oikawa cheers as they make the world’s slowest, largest donut, then one more after that. Yuda slows down gradually and the car stalls again.

“Oops.”

“You have to push the clutch in when you stop.” Iwaizumi pats his knee. “It’s okay. You want to go again?”

“Hey!” Oikawa shouts, suddenly lurching forward.

“What are you shouting for, we’re right here?”

“Iwa-chan, it’s the ocean! We’re right by the ocean!” He’s gesturing wildly out the window.

“Is that the ocean?” Yuda asks, squinting through the bug-splattered windshield.

Oikawa is already getting out of the truck again and running across the field. The other two catch up a minute later where he’s standing at the edge of a cliff looking out at the water, sparkling in alternating pitch black and reflective white. “Look at all the stars.” They look. There are a million, ranging from tiny pinpricks to one-yen coins, all dwarfed by the size of the moon, which is in made small by the panoramic dome of the sky curving black velvet across the earth. Oikawa looks torn between the sky and the ocean, whipping back and forth between them every twenty seconds or so. Yuda sits down first, then Iwaizumi, then finally Oikawa, who won’t lie down because he’s still excited about the water.

Iwaizumi watches the stars and doesn’t realizes when the gleaming specks of light disappear until Yuda’s telling him not to fall asleep. He opens his eyes again and sees Yuda’s face backlit and smiling above him, and he reaches up and pulls him down for a gentle kiss. Yuda leans into him and hums back against his lips, nudging them open with his tongue. Iwaizumi curls his hand around the nape of his neck, brushing his thumb against the curly locks as he strokes his tongue with his own.

Oikawa tunes in after a minute and yells. “Hey what the heck guys!” He throws himself over Yuda’s back and Iwaizumi pushes back on them until they’re all rolling across the grass. Oikawa’s screeching turns to laughing, Yuda is silently wheezing and trying to move his pinned arm to wipe tears from his eyes, and Iwaizumi is flopped triumphantly on top of them both.

“Ha-Hajime please, I can’t breathe—”

Iwaizumi moves off and lies next to Oikawa. He pulls out his phone, checking the time. “We should probably go back soon,” he says after a long moment, feeling disappointed.

“Let’s sleep in the back of the truck,” Oikawa says, sounding as if he’s finally closed his eyes. It’s close to two in the morning.

“Your mom will flip,” Yuda says, lying on his side to face them both.

“I’ll just say I’m staying at Iwa-chan’s house. Yudacchi, you still owe me a kiss.”

“’Kay,” he says, smiling lazily. Yuda sits up and leans over Iwaizumi, and Oikawa scrambles up and meets him in the middle.

Iwaizumi frowns up at both of them, gently holding each other’s lips pinched between their own as they peer down beneath nearly closed eyes. “How long are you guys going to do that right over me?” he asks, sounding sourer than he means to.

They pull apart a couple centimeters and giggle. “Don’t worry Iwa-chan, I saved some for you t—” Oikawa’s cut off by a hand in his face.

“Let’s go to sleep.” Iwaizumi stands up, offering them each a hand.

—

Two in the morning and it’s still warm enough to sleep in the open bed of a truck in the middle of a field. The sound of the ocean, however faint in the distance, lulls them to sleep along with the comfortable contact of each other’s backs and chests pressed together, with their hands and arms and feet curled together in soft tangles.


End file.
